Morning Feature – Farewell, 2012

Contrary to worldwide rumors, 2012 was not a complete disaster. On the other hand…. (More)

The year began with Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry returning to Texas, his head held high, having remembered which federal agencies he would have eliminated had he not suspended his campaign. Having been promoted to the post of Gaffologer in Chief by his primary win in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich promptly promised to recruit poor children to build and clean a base on the moon. Outraged that he could not break through the din, Rick Santorum announced that he had more money than Gingrich and would buy another sweater vest. Meanwhile, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced that Obamacare would include contraceptive care, prompting House Republicans to call for a ban on female orgasms while denying their party was waging war on women.

January gave way to February, the shortest month of the year, but a leap year, thus giving the media a reason to note in passing that Ron Paul had not yet dropped out of the Republican presidential primary race. His promise to build a base on the moon having met with derision, Gingrich proposed sending Santorum to Mars. Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney offered to finance the expedition by delaying the completion of one of his car elevators. Santorum said he would need a thicker sweater vest for the trip, and several Mayan alpaca sealed their lips. House Republicans, dismayed that their ban on female orgasms was polling poorly, called a hearing with a panel of men to explain why women didn’t really enjoy sex and wanted their employers to decide whether they should have children. Later in the month, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke appeared before an unofficial House hearing to explain why Republicans knew less than nothing about women’s health, which fractured Rush Limbaugh’s jaw and allowed his every oxycodone-spurred synapse to leak out onto his radio microphone. Horrified by Limbaugh’s outburst, Romney said he would not have used quite the same words to describe Fluke as a shameless hussy, and insisted Republicans were not waging war on women. Meanwhile, Virginia debated a bill to require women seeking abortions to submit to public transvaginal ultrasounds while local clerics read passages from the Book of Eternal Damnation. Elsewhere, Elizabeth II celebrated her 60th year as Queen of England by auditioning for the role of Moneypenny in the next James Bond film.

The Queen’s offer so stunned the publishers of the Encyclopædia Britannica that they canceled their print edition in March. Certain that he had escaped the grasp of historical reckoning, Gingrich promised to build a car elevator that would carry both Romney and Santorum to Mars. His soaring rhetoric convinced Super Tuesday voters in Georgia to buy old copies of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and Super Tuesday voters elsewhere to choose either Santorum or Romney. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed a watered-down version of the transvaginal probe law, requiring only that women seeking abortions submit to ultrasounds and have the word “Fluke” tattooed in glowing red ink on their foreheads, saying the law marked a complete victory in what was not a war on women. And because March has 31 days, Ron Paul was required to shout loudly in a dark, empty room.

Satisfied with his Super Tuesday victories, Santorum dropped out of the race in April because the weather was becoming too warm for sweater vests, while insisting this had nothing to do with climate change, which he said was caused by women using contraception. Gingrich denied both climate change and any war on women, whom he said were welcome to clean his moon base anytime, thereby drawing a piercing stare from Mrs. Gingrich.

Chagrined, Gingrich dropped out of the race in May, clearing the way for Mitt Romney to go mano a mano with Ron Paul. However, no one could locate Paul, who had last been seen reading passages from Ayn Rand to bats in a New Mexico cave. The sudden silence allowed the 2012 World Expo to open in Korea, and the Tokyo Skytree to open in Japan. The silence ended when the National Hurricane Center forecast a lighter-than-usual storm season, prompting anyone within 100 miles of a coastline to flood stores and stock up on supplies.

June opened with the century’s last transit of Venus, which caused Mayan alpacas to seal their lips. Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee reached its peak with a pageant on the River Thames, with Her Royal Highness riding in a rocket speedboat specially built by Q. Spain’s credit rating was slashed to BBB, making the nation only one step above a British television network. President Barack Obama announced the new DREAMers Rule, which required Republicans to imagine that Hispanic citizens would either not vote in 2012 or would vote for Mitt Romney and then self-deport. And allegations of sexual abuse by football coach Jerry Sandusky at Penn State prompted Pope Benedict XVI to choose a former Fox News reporter as the Vatican’s new media strategy specialist.

Scientists at CERN began July with a bang, announcing the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson, the particle theorized to be responsible for the property of mass. Cheered by the news, President Obama opened a savage advertising campaign to smear Mitt Romney as being Mitt Romney, prompting howls of outrage from Republicans who had been smeared by Romney in the primaries and wished the president had attacked sooner. Delighted with the ejection seat at her Buckingham Palace desk, Elizabeth II helped James Bond open the 2012 Olympics by skydiving into the stadium while singing “Diamonds Are Forever.” U.S. audiences missed the song, as NBC interrupted to run an interview with Mitt Romney, who declared his admiration for persons of Anglo-Saxon heritage and said the London Games would give the world a chance to see the futility of British gun control laws. Outraged Britons told Romney to go to Israel, where Republican hangers-on went skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee, forcing them to go to Poland to insult unions like the Solidarity Movement that had shaken off the yolk of Communism. Romney returned to the U.S. to discover that his wife’s horse, Rafalca, had left a pile in his car elevator.

Rumors that the Romney campaign was sputtering grew to a crescendo in August as the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars to telecast an OFA rally. Outraged by President Obama’s comment that business owners took advantage of public resources like roads and bridges and utility lines, Romney told planners to build the entire Republican National Convention around a theme of empty chairs. Meanwhile, Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin presented a speech titled “Uterine Responses to Legitimate Forced Intercourse” to the American Society for the Advancement of Gynecological Ignorance, which sent his poll numbers plummeting and thus forced other Republicans to deny they were waging war on women. In London, American women responded by winning two gold medals for each of Akin’s IQ points.

September opened with the national party conventions. Republicans met in Tampa during lighter-than-usual Tropical Storm Isaac to yell at empty chairs about who built what. A week later, Democrats met in Charlotte to show Republicans why Americans preferred Democrats. Former President Bill Clinton discussed arithmetic, prompting Republican candidate Mitt Romney to declare he would shut down public broadcasting to protect America’s children from icky numbers and large bird puppets. President Obama accepted the Democratic nomination to roars of applause and a dominant lead in the polls, forcing Republican blogger Dean Chambers to play with icky numbers to prove that pollsters were counting too many people who said they would vote for the president.

October opened with the release of Romney’s infamous 47% video, forcing Republicans to explain that they were not waging war on half the country. That led into the presidential debate season, which President Obama opened to the dismay of his supporters by spending the first debate drawing pictures of First Dog Bo and Big Bird frolicking on the White House lawn. Vice President Biden rose to the challenge in the next debate by displaying every facial expression ever cataloged by social psychologists, while Republican vice presidential contender Paul Ryan gulped down 26.2 gallons of water in just under three hours. Having spotted Romney the opening debate, President Obama shocked the media by saying “Please proceed, Governor” and then watching Romney eat his words, his foot, and most of his shoe. As the days ticked down to the election, lighter-than-usual Hurricane Sandy took aim at the northeast coast, giving MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough a chance to say The Race Was A Coin Flip despite President Obama’s leads in almost every swing state, because every Republican Scarborough knew felt hopeful. New York Times statistical maven Nate Silver attempted to explain that these GOP hopes were the lingering effect of President Obama’s DREAMers Rule, to no avail.

Thus November opened with Sandy swamping the east coast, prompting New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to embrace President Obama after a telephone conversation with Bruce Springsteen. That plus a never-relinquished lead in almost every swing state boosted President Obama to victory, forcing Karl Rove to demand an immediate recount among Fox News poll analysts, who used icky numbers to prove Rove should consider a career with the National Hurricane Center. Having won 47% of the vote, Romney returned to California to sweep Rafalca’s droppings out of his car elevator, and President Obama began negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner to stop the U.S. from descending into Mayan alpaca lips.

December brought several tragic bangs, proving to National Rifle Association Wayne LaPierre that Americans could only be safe if each of us took turns shooting each other. While the much-feared Mayan alpaca lips did not destroy the U.S., they were pursed in dismay at the return of Rick Santorum’s sweater vests. Fox News declared War on Christmas, not to be confused with the war on women, which Republicans still insist never existed, while Grover Norquist declared that Americans had elected House Speaker John Boehner and lame duck President Obama needed to accept that. Thus we all peered over the cliff into 2013 and thought …

… “Well, at least we won’t have to look at Newt Gingrich’s moon base again.”

Brilliant! Just brilliant! I would not have believed I could laugh so hard about last year. Thank you so much! I hope this goes viral

NCrissieB

Thank you both for the kind words. This was a fun year to write. For all the nail-biting while it happened, there was a surprising amount of good news … not least of which was President Obama’s and Senate Democrats’ victories in November. Getting there wasn’t always so fun, though….